


The Grace of God

by modulegirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abaddon is a bitch, But you already knew that, Canon-Compliant, Crowley is being helpful, Dean's been grim the past few episodes and will continue getting grimmer, Does it have something to do with the final trial?, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I just have to get there, I've written an epilogue, It may be short, Lots of Hurt, More characters as I figure out how to get where I'm going, Sam and Dean are not getting along too well, but why?, don't expect it to get much better, for violence and not-nice-things happening to characters we love, it may be long, it may be somewhere in between, likely to change as it goes, not-his-own-grace Castiel, possible, rated for now, seriously, that's a HUGE part of the story people!, very little comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-12 21:05:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1200526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modulegirl/pseuds/modulegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel in Hell. Dean's off to rescue him with Crowley as his guide, while Sam looks for Gadreel using the grace that Cas left with him. If you think this ends well, you haven't been paying attention.</p><p>Canon compliant through “The Purge" After that, not so much.</p><p>A/N: This is my first SPN fic. I’m not making anything but sleepless nights off this fic, so don’t sue. No slash, but emotions will run deep if I'm doing it right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Together Alone

In the week since that uncomfortable midnight discussion the night of their return from the fat camp, Dean had been trying to avoid antagonizing Sam any further. He stayed to his room, the kitchen, and the garage, while Sam took over the library, researching the last batch of angel tablet translations Kevin had left unfinished.

The only time they interacted, Dean brought Sam breakfast and dinner. He kept the kid fed because, left on his own, Sammy would have just kept right on working until he dropped. As it was, Dean found Sam slumped in one of the leather club chairs tucked into an alcove, book on his chest, feet up on an ottoman, snoring like a sawmill, more than one morning the past week. But Dean didn’t say anything. They weren’t supposed to be brothers where work was concerned, so Dean just made sure Sam ate and left it at that.

He worked on the Impala, tuning the engine, rotating the tires, testing the brakes. Once she was purring like a kitten, he cleaned her up. He loved the sound of the vacuum, picking up pine needles and gravel out of the footwells. He reveled in the smell of Windex and Armorall as he cleaned windows, seats, and the dash. Turtle Wax induced a kind of euphoria though he wasn’t entirely sure if that was the shine it left on the Impala’s black finish or the fact that he used it in an enclosed space. And after the Impala was taken care of and put to bed, he turned his attention to the other cars in the garage, the cars the Men of Letters had left behind.

The last Man of Letters had left the bunker before 1960, and the garage reflected that abandonment. Tools had been carefully stowed and the cars parked and left as carefully and tidily as the bunker proper, but more than fifty years of disuse had had their effect on the whole, more so than in the library, the kitchen, or even the communications room.

Rubber gaskets had dried and cracked. Batteries that hadn’t simply gone dead had leaked and corroded. Tires had gone flat and in several cases the weight of the car had flattened rims over time. At least one radiator had rusted through. Windows and leather seats had discolored and over everything a fine coat of dust had combined with the grease and oil present in even the cleanest garage, forming a nearly impenetrable film over every car. Motorcycles had fared little better though they had been covered with sheets. (Dean had a difficult time imagining his grandfather tooling around Kansas on a then brand-new Indian.)

He spent most of his time just cataloging the damage that time had inflicted and prioritizing which cars needed what repairs. The Men of Letters had kept meticulous records on the cars and Dean delighted in the degree of detail he found and the ease with which he could use the format they had developed. With Sam in the library, Dean took over the kitchen table, stacking ledger books for each car in two neat piles against the wall, pulling a book off one, reading through it, and making his own notes before stowing the finished ledger on the other pile and moving onto the next.

It made for quiet days. Lonely too. Sam worked in the other room, but he might as well have been working in the Library of Congress for all the companionship they offered one another. Except for a distracted “Thanks” when he brought Sam a plate, Sam said nothing. He didn’t seem angry, which was a good thing as far as Dean was concerned, because Sam had been pissed that night they’d nearly fought.

And maybe that was what bothered Dean the most. They hadn’t really fought. They’d talked and voices had been raised and tempers had flared, but all the wind had gone out of both their sails when Sam had said that he wouldn’t do anything like Dean had done for Sam in order to save Dean’s life. As Dean stood there, stumped for what to say, Sam sighed, got up, said good night and went to bed. The next morning, when Dean woke up, Sam was already elbows deep in research, so Dean made breakfast and stayed out of his brother’s way.

Now he stood on the top step, leaning against one of the columns, cup of coffee in hand, watching Sam. Poring over books spread out across the table, tapping his laptop, brow furrowed as he worked so damned hard to unravel what Kevin should still be here doing. Dean couldn’t help but look to the spot on the other side of the table, the spot where Gadreel, in Sam’s body, had killed the prophet. He still saw Kevin’s body, eyes burned out, mouth open in betrayed surprise, unaware that Sam was angel-possessed, believing as he died that Sam had been the one to kill him.

Lost in his own thoughts, Dean started when Sam yelled his name with some urgency.

“Yeah, Sam,” he said quietly.

Sam looked up, his eyes a little wild, obviously not aware that Dean had been so close. Dean walked down the stairs, watching his brother.

“Find something?” Dean asked, knowing by Sam’s expression that he’d found something that had profoundly disturbed him.

Sam sat back and took a deep breath, visibly calming himself down. He reached out and closed a couple of books, clicked a key or two on the laptop and closed it. By the time he was done and Dean stood at the head of the table, Sam looked ready to describe what he’d discovered.

He looked up at Dean and for the first time in a week, looked his brother in the eye then let his gaze slide away, back to the table in front of him.

“You know I’ve been working on the last of the notes Kevin left behind. He’d been blowing through the angel tablet, translating the prophecies from, I don’t know, prophet-speak or whatever they were written in, into Enochian and Latin and some Greek, a couple of passages fully translated into English, though I think I found one in Vietnamese, which Kevin told me he didn’t know. It’s weird - it seems to depend on what word he was looking for and whether he knew it in one or the other, whether it fit. I don’t know how he got so much off that one little piece of rock.” Sam picked up and shook a pile of mismatched paper, Kevin’s notes. “There’s a lot of different stuff here. Spells and exorcisms, a couple of stories that explain the beginning of the angels and one that looks like a map of Purgatory, which would have been really handy for you while you were, you know…”

“Sam.”

Sam stopped talking, looked up at his brother.

“You’re rambling,” Dean said.

Sam looked a bit chagrined. “Oh. Yeah, I guess so.”

Before he could start off again, Dean said, “Why'd you call me, Sam? We haven’t had more than ten words to say to each other in the last eight days so you must have found something important.” He really didn’t want to bring up the fight or its aftermath for fear of reminding Sam of how angry he had been to stop talking, but he felt like Sam had found something so profound that he needed to be kept on track or else he’d just talk himself in circles. Which wasn’t like Sam at all, so Dean really needed to know what he’d found so they could start dealing with it.

Sam sighed, looking at his hand resting on Kevin’s notes. “It’s a prophecy about an angel. One particular angel. A prophecy about how to open Heaven again.” He looked up at his brother. “It’s the only prophecy Kevin translated that named the angel, Dean. The prophecy names Castiel.”


	2. Prophecy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's all just setting up what comes further on down the line.

Sam watched his brother close his eyes as he reached for the back of the chair in front of him.

“It-it’s very fragmented. I think Kevin was having a tough time with it and put it away, worked on other stuff. But it’s definitely Cas, Dean.”

“What’s he gonna do? Nuke the world this time?” Dean opened his eyes and looked at Sam. He was silent for a moment, then grabbed the chair and, with a wordless shout, smashed it, legs first, into the column behind him.

Sam jumped to his feet, concerned that Dean might do something stupid, like hurt himself or upset the books that Sam had carefully arranged on the table.

Dean pointed the fragmented back of the chair at Sam. “He’s family, Sam, but he is a royal pain in the ass.” He looked at the chair back and then at the mess around him where chair debris had fallen. Looking up, he had the decency to look a little ashamed of himself.

“Well,” Sam said, sitting back down since it looked like Dean had calmed down, “I’m not sure what he’s going to do.” He pulled Kevin’s notes to him and opened the laptop again as Dean came around the desk. “The prophecy mentions Castiel, the angel of Thursday, specifically. See, Kevin underlined it here. It says that through his Grace the gates of Heaven may be destroyed. Thing is, there’s at least two scenarios depending on what happens. One looks pretty much like the Apocalypse did. But Kevin’s notes also mention that ‘out of this may come Humanity’s salvation. For once the gates of Heaven have been destroyed, all Mankind may walk free.” Sam looked up at Dean, standing slightly behind him. “That sounds good right?”

Dean sighed and turned away. 

“You need to call Cas. We need to talk to him.”

“Why wouldn’t he mention his part in this prophecy? Huh, Sam? Is he hiding something again?”

“I don’t know. But we need to talk to him now. He’ll come if you call.”

Dean walked slowly toward the bookcase that lined the wall of the library, gaps in the spines where Sam had removed books that had not yet been replaced. He put his hand on one of the shelves and bowed his head.

He didn’t say anything out loud, but Sam knew when he lifted his head that Dean had finished his prayer. And a moment later, he heard the rustle of Castiel’s wings, behind him, on the other side of the table.

They both turned at the same time to look at Cas. He wore a trenchcoat but shorter and less detailed than the one he’d worn before he lost his Grace. He didn’t have the suit jacket on underneath and no tie around his neck. He looked like Cas, but the effect of the wardrobe change was arguably more disturbing than if he had taken another vessel. Sam wondered idly if Cas and Jimmy Novak’s body were now so inextricably intertwined that it might not be possible for Cas to take another vessel.

“Hello, Sam,” Cas said, nodding. He looked up at Dean. “Hello, Dean. Are you both well?”

Sam asked, “Why would you think otherwise?”

“Dean’s prayer was rather forceful. And short. I thought perhaps you,” he nodded at Sam, “might be suffering some unforeseen effect of continuing to carry Grace within you.” He looked around, raising his hands from his sides and dropping them back. “I see that you are both well.” He looked at Dean and looked away again, leaning in toward Sam. “I believe your brother is angry with me, Sam. I do not know what I have done. Do you?”

Sam turned around and looked at Dean, glaring at Castiel with a look Sam thought might be useful for cutting steel.

“Dean!” he whispered, trying to get his brother’s attention. When that failed, Sam reached out a long leg and tapped Dean’s shin with the tip of his shoe.

That did it. Dean turned his glare to Sam.

“We don’t know anything yet. Don’t make any assumptions, okay?”

Cas moved forward until he stood at the edge of the table. “What is wrong, Sam?”

“Did you know your name is in a prophecy on the angel tablet?” Dean asked suddenly, all but accusing Cas of hiding something.

Judging from the shocked look on Castiel’s face, Sam decided that he had not known about the angel tablet. Cas could lie but he was not a good actor when not prepared. He made no effort to hide his surprise, his body language indicated his shock was real. 

“What?” Cas finally said. “Only one angel’s name appears on the angel tablet. Lucifer is the Morning Star, the Bringer of the Apocalypse. Even Michael, who was to have fought Lucifer, was not named. He among the archangels was chosen by the archangels.” Cas turned away, reeling. “I’m just Castiel. I’m a soldier, nothing more.”

Speaking to Cas’ back, Sam said, “But you were the one who pulled both of us out of Hell. You were chosen for it with Dean and you just did it with me. Without you we would have never been able to stop the Apocalypse. You released the Leviathan and followed them back to Purgatory. And your Grace is what cast the angels out of Heaven.”

Sam looked up at Dean who said, “Seems like a lot more than just a soldier to me.”

Cas came back to the edge of the table. He leaned over, his hands resting on open volumes of Latin and Greek. He looked at Dean and then back to Sam. 

“What does it say, Sam?” His blue eyes blazed with something like his Grace and Sam swallowed when he saw real fear there as well.

Sam looked down at the notes and said, “It’s in fragments. Kevin didn’t get too far.” He turned the paper to Cas, who looked down with a frown of concentration as though by thinking very hard he would unravel the mystery a prophet had nearly killed himself solving. “See, your name and your title as the angel of Thursday. It says something about your Grace, um, ‘Castiel’s True Grace’ and then there seems to be two scenarios. One frees Humanity and the other, uh, the other one…”

“The other one destroys the world, does it not?”

“Mostly.”

Cas sighed as he bowed his head over the books. Sam’s heart sped up as he saw a shimmer in the air over Cas’ bent back. He’d have to be really upset to loosen his control enough to allow a mortal to see the wings themselves.

“We must determine what the prophecy says. I cannot—I cannot do this again. I will not. I’m a soldier. I am - I was the leader of my garrison. That was all I was ever meant to be.”

Dean snorted, relenting in the face of Castiel’s very real anguish at the thought of being the harbinger of doom. Again. “When Gadreel took out Kevin, Metatron arranged it so there would be no prophet to take his place.”

“Yeah, we don’t have anyway of finding one anyway,” Sam said, nodding. “And you can’t decipher the tablet because it’s not written for angels.”

He picked up Kevin’s notes and started laying them down in some kind of order that might make sense. “So here’s your name.” He laid that sheet on the table to his left. “And here are the two possible outcomes.” He laid those on the table to his right and sat back. “Now we just gotta fill in the space between the two.” Riffling through the sheaf, Sam came across several passages that he could puzzle through with a dictionary and one or two questions for Cas on Enochian spelling. After fifteen minutes, he placed the page, covered with his own notes next to Castiel’s page. “So there seems to be something about torture, possibly Hell and the Righteous Man.”

Dean stepped back from the table. “Hope to Hell that doesn’t mean I gotta go back there. I did my time.”

“It’s so spotty, Dean.” Sam frowned and shuffled Kevin’s notes again before tossing them onto the table. “It could mean anything. I can’t do anything with these notes. And no matter what without a prophet I can’t make heads or tails of anything on this tablet all by myself.”

“Then it is your very good fortune to have entered into a partnership with me, Moose. Or your brother anyway. The way you two live in each other’s back pockets we’ll call it one and the same.”

Sam, Dean, and Castiel each turned toward the bunker’s entrance. Where stood the former King of Hell in an immaculate silk suit.

“Crowley?”

“I know that prophecy, boys. And Castiel. It’s the bedtime story we tell the new souls to keep them up at night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I don't know what I'm doing. Usually I sit and cogitate for months on a story but never really write it. Having put it out there for people to read or not, I feel remiss if I'm not actually working on it. But... this is going to need to be edited at some point. I can't put this out on a chapter by chapter basis AND maintain a coherent style. Unless I fall into it as I go, in which case I can go back and rewrite the first parts that don't match. I've already had to make some serious changes to things I thought were written in stone. So it may be that I will be just as surprised by the outcome of this story as you hopefully will be.


End file.
